today will be different

Although not exactly months and months old (as in years ago), I haven’t yet read Maria Semple’s newest novel, “Today Will Be Different.” I am very much looking forward to doing so.

Here’s what Lauren Groff has to say:

“I had the uncanny feeling, while reading Today Will Be Different, that Maria Semple had somehow snuck into my house when I was asleep, took an x-ray image of my heart, then painted it by hand in neon colors. This book is searingly honest and hilarious and dark and neurotic. It is dizzying. Best of all, it is delicious.”

―Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

I’ll have to look up “Fates and Furies,” now, by the way. Anyone read it, yet?

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avocados

Why do you buy avocados, when
all they do is just sit there in the
bowl
getting soft?
Do you think you’ll make
something from them?
An inevitable dip with
the usual suspects –
peppers, tomatoes,
fiesta, feast, a tangled equation?
Do you think you’ll slice them
and place them between
two pieces of brown bread
with mayo, maybe – or a good
stinky cheese?
Will you mash them up
and smear them on your face?
Will they beautify you?
Make you stronger?
Fill your veins with the fat
from their shrunken, aged-looking bodies
that you’ll cut open to reveal
frolicking green-spring,
youth, optimism in succulence,
a pliant meat
you bite into like butter and
chew in sunken distraction
as you read a magazine, look at your phone, get on
Facebook?
Will you dissect their sensuous shape?
Pop out the pit?
Peel off the
rough skin
with your finger,
sliding it around the perimeter
until the satin and dulcet flesh
is free?
Until you’ve had your way with them,
plucked them
from their sanctuary like tiny virgins,
closed your lips around them
in reckless, primordial pleasure?
Or will they sit in the bowl?
Why do you buy them
when they sit in the bowl?
Old and wrinkled
and squishy,
waiting for a supreme moment
that will never come.
The one where they ooze magnificence –
fledglings
bursting from unremarkable shells;
New, enthusiastic, eternal.
No.
Rather, they sit in the bowl,
waiting for you.
For your best and latest ideas,
your most earnest
intentions.